A content application programming interface (API) will smooth the way for web developers to build applications and services using Guardian content, while a Data Store will contain datasets curated by Guardian editors and open for others to use.

Again, most of the discussion was about how to facilitate access to these data sets, how to keep the user interface as simple as possible, and the need for instant access – e.g. grabbing datasets from a server while travelling to a conference, without having to have all the tools and data loaded on a large disk first.

Print Volunteers 'vital to science data collection' Science and environment reporter, BBC News Organisations like Earthwatch provide opportunities for people to join research projects all over the world Volunteers play a vital role in ensuring that a range of valuable long-term datasets continue to survive, a team of scientists will say.

Dr Jim Gleason, the NPP project scientist at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center, commented: "NPP's observations will produce long-term datasets which will help scientists make better models, which then lead to better predictions, which hopefully can be used to make better decisions."

"Our research highlights the value of today's state-of - the-art models and long-term datasets that enable such unexpected and complex climate feedbacks to be detected and accounted for in our future predictions," added Professor Carslaw.